Stillwater

After being presented at the Cannes Film Festival, Tom McCarthy's new film opened at the Deauville American Film Festival and we were able to discover it at the Centre International de Deauville. We must admit that this film was an excellent choice to open the festival as it allows to emphasize the strong contrast between life in the United States (Oklahoma) and in France (Marseille). This film will remind some of the atmosphere of Roman Polanski's Frantic in which an American investigates with the help of a French woman on a personal matter. Once again the city of Marseille is revealed to be colorful and is perfectly used as a backdrop to offer us a thriller perfectly mastered and interpreted mainly by the duo composed by Matt Damon and Camille Cottin.

We discover Bill Baker (Matt Damon) who is unemployed and leaves his native Oklahoma to go to Marseille to try to get his daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin) out. Not speaking French and not adapted to life in France, he must try to free his daughter who has been incarcerated for a murder she claims she didn't commit and his only chance to try and prove her innocence is to find a person who once bragged about committing the murder. Bill sees helping his daughter as a way to redeem himself and to reconnect with her and regain her trust. However, the social and cultural differences between the United States and France will not help Bill to be able to help his daughter in a suitable way. He will come up against a different judicial system in the United States and will not be able to count on his daughter's lawyer who believes that no new evidence will allow his case to be reopened. The only person who will agree to help Bill is a French theater actress, Virginie (Camille Cottin), mother of little Maya (Lilou Siauvaud). The meeting of Bill and Virginie will change their lives and help Allison.

The writer and director Tom McCarthy has always conceived his cinema as an approach to our current society, from his first film The Station Agent (2003) but also through his films The Visitor (2008), The Winners (2011), The Cobbler (2014) and Spotlight (2015). We had to wait six years to discover his new film in which he wanted to highlight the importance of family ties but also the many striking differences between French and American society. The city of Marseille is once again at the very center of the film's story, as it was recently in the excellent French film Bac Nord by Cédric Jimenez. Once again it is interesting to see an American director's vision of this city, which once again features corrupt police ready to take bribes and dangerous neighborhoods where gangs impose their own law. Far from the calm of Paris as portrayed in many films, the city of Marseille seems to be a city in which violence is omnipresent, as Bill is about to experience.

Those who expect a new action film in the tradition of the cult film saga Jason Bourne may be disappointed as the film tends towards a character study and a perfectly shot social drama. Once again Matt Damon shows that he is an excellent actor and Camille Cottin reveals herself once again as a great actress who chooses her roles perfectly and seems to prefer to go for dramas rather than comedies. The great quality of Stiillwater is to move away from the simple summer blockbuster featuring a Hollywood star to the same direction as independent cinema, that is to say, a film with a rather simple story that constantly seeks to be realistic and not to want to fill the eyes of the audience. 

The family is at the center of the story, whether it is Bill's and Allison's or the one that will be formed between him and Virginia and her daughter Maya. Surrogate father for Maya, Bill sees here the fact of having a second chance and succeeding in rebuilding his personal life after a past drama. Matt Damon imposes himself here as one of the best current actors and gives Stillwater all its strength and fragility. Stillwater is an undeniable success and should allow Camille Cottin to make a name for herself in Hollywood as she proves to be an excellent actress once again.

Stillwater
Directed by Tom McCarthy
Produced by Steve Golin, Tom McCarthy, Jonathan King & Liza Chasin
Written by Tom McCarthy, Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain & Noé Debr 
Starring Matt Damon, Camille Cotin, Abigail Breslin, Lilou Siauvaud, Deanna Dunagan, Idir Azougli, Anne Le Ny, Moussa Maaskri
Music by Mychael Danna
Cinematography : Masanobu Takayanagi
Edited by Tom McArdle 
Production companies : Participant, DreamWorks Pictures, Slow Pony, Anonymous Content, 3dot Productions, Supernatural Pictures
Distributed by Universal Pictures (France)
Release date : July 8, 2021 (Cannes), July 30, 2021 (United States), September 29, 2021 (France)
Running time : 140 minutes

Seen on September 3, 2021 at the Centre International de Deauville

Mulder's Mark:

News stories never cease to inspire authors. With Stillwater, Tom McCarthy (Spotlight, The Louder Voice) is freely inspired by the famous Amanda Knox case, in which an American student was accused of murdering her roommate in Italy. There is no question here of repeating the legal-media imbroglio that fascinated the whole world and especially the Americans who were stunned by the idea that behind the blue eyes of the student could hide a relentless murderer. Tom McCarthy is interested in the human drama behind the tragic story.

The film tells us the story of Bill, a driller in the depths of Oklahoma, an absent father for a long time, whose daughter Allison is serving a heavy sentence in the Beaumettes prison in Marseille. Convinced of his innocence, he will try everything to find the real murderer. With a pitch like this, McCarthy immediately conjures up the literary imaginations of those thrillers set in Mediterranean coastal towns, where the omnipresent light only conceals the dark souls of some of its inhabitants for a time. However, in the image, McCarthy prefers naturalistic effects to an imagery too marked "genre film".

If he makes Marseilles a real character in the film, he never falls into easy clichés for viewers eager for popcorn and outdated ideas. On the contrary, the cultural clash between the two countries takes shape in a rather unexpected way. As if the Phocaean city crystallized something profoundly more universal than the capital. Between Bill, the blue-collar worker, and the inhabitants of the working-class neighborhoods, the line of demarcation finally proves to be quite tenuous. The sensitive heart of the film lies precisely in the relationship between the quiet American and the bubbly French woman. Matt Damon and Camille Cottin play a score full of nuances that works wonderfully.

In its purely thriller part, Stillwater also reserves a few surprises for the audience. Its precise writing reveals clues without them ever realizing it. Its suspense and twists are never set up in a fake way or to the detriment of the characters. This quasi-documentary coherence of McCarthy's cinema lends itself very well to the meanderings of the genre. Probably because he fully assumes his hybrid character. A nice success.  

Stillwater
Directed by Tom McCarthy
Produced by Steve Golin, Tom McCarthy, Jonathan King & Liza Chasin
Written by Tom McCarthy, Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain & Noé Debr 
Starring Matt Damon, Camille Cotin, Abigail Breslin, Lilou Siauvaud, Deanna Dunagan, Idir Azougli, Anne Le Ny, Moussa Maaskri
Music by Mychael Danna
Cinematography : Masanobu Takayanagi
Edited by Tom McArdle 
Production companies : Participant, DreamWorks Pictures, Slow Pony, Anonymous Content, 3dot Productions, Supernatural Pictures
Distributed by Universal Pictures (France)
Release date : July 8, 2021 (Cannes), July 30, 2021 (United States), September 29, 2021 (France)
Running time : 140 minutes

Seen on September 18, 2021 at Club Marbeuf

Marianne Velma's Mark: